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Franconia Potatoes
Pare six medium-sized potatoes; parboil five minutes. Place on grate under roast beef. Baste with beef fat, and bake from twenty to thirty minutes, turning often.
A method more than a recipe: potatoes finished in the drippings under a roast. The instructions assume a roasting pan with a rack and a joint of beef already in the oven.
- "Grate" means the rackThe potatoes go on the wire rack or grid in the roasting pan, directly beneath the beef, so the fat drips onto them. If your roast sits on a rack over a shallow pan, put the potatoes in the pan itself, spaced so they are not crowded.
- Oven temperatureThe book gives none. If you are working in a modern oven, something in the 325-350F range after an initial sear suits both the beef and the potatoes.
- The parboil is the hingeFive minutes in boiling salted water softens only the outer layer. Drain them thoroughly and let the surface steam dry for a minute before they go in the oven, or they will stew rather than crisp.
- Timing runs longTwenty to thirty minutes will not cook six medium potatoes through at roasting temperature after only a five-minute parboil. Expect 45 to 60 minutes, and test with a skewer; the original timing suits a hotter oven or a longer parboil.
- Turning and bastingTurn every fifteen minutes or so and spoon fat over them each time; this is what produces an even brown crust.
- Without a roastBeef dripping or rendered beef fat in a hot pan gives the same result. Do not substitute butter alone; it will burn over an hour at 350F.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield; six medium potatoes will serve about four as a side dish.
Franconia potatoes appear in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century American cookbooks as a name for potatoes browned in the pan beneath a roast; the Boston Cooking-School Cook Book carries a Franconia Potatoes recipe in closely similar wording, and this entry is plainly of that family. The origin of the name is not documented; it is often linked to Franconia, New Hampshire, though nothing connects the dish to that town beyond the coincidence of the word. What the recipe really records is a habit of the coal- and wood-range kitchen, where oven space was scarce and fuel expensive, so the vegetable was cooked in the fat and heat already committed to the meat. Lowney's Cook Book (1907), written by Maria Willett Howard for the Walter M. Lowney chocolate company, is best remembered for its confectionery but also carried a general household section, and this brief entry is a piece of ordinary roasting practice preserved almost as shorthand.